Amusing Ourselves from Death | Desiring God

Audio Transcript

Amusing Ourselves to Demise — that was the fantastic title to a ebook created by Neil Postman and posted in 1985. Amusing Ourselves to Death. Maybe you have heard of it or even study it. It was a good title just before the electronic age. And it is a wonderful title for the digital age. And I’m borrowing it for this episode, with just one alter: amusing ourselves from death — today’s topic in a clip from a John Piper sermon preached in the summer time of 1996.

Just before we get into it, here’s a little context for the sermon, and why eternal realities ended up especially on the forefront of Pastor John’s mind at the time. Evangelist Billy Graham was in Minneapolis for a five-evening rally. By then, Graham was 77 a long time aged. He spoke for a 7 days in the Metrodome, which was just measures absent from Bethlehem Baptist Church. It was a massive collecting, properly attended, and nearby reports set attendance for the last evening correct all over 100,000 folks. All of that was going on the exact week as this sermon from Pastor John. And that is why he’ll mention the Dome in a minor little bit. With that, here’s Pastor John in June of 1996.

Demise is unfortunate — and demise is terrifying if there is a holy, just God who’s likely to call everybody to account.

If you do not believe in God — if there is no God, and death is only the conclusion of a lengthy summer time — it’s just sad. It’s unhappy. And the motive it’s sad is for the reason that lifetime as we know it in this environment is the basis of almost everything that helps make us content — loved ones, friends, leisure, foodstuff, sex, career, function, this means. If you do not have lifetime, you really do not have any of that. And to eliminate that feels sad, but it doesn’t really feel terrifying. It is not terrifying to tumble asleep imagining you under no circumstances wake up. It is about — no consciousness at any time once more. Which is not terrifying. It’s unhappy to shed factors that you know, but it’s not terrifying to go to slumber and never wake up once again. Zero consciousness.

But if there is a holy, just God of truth, who has a law, who has a glory, and we will 1 day give an account to that God for everything great or evil we have ever finished, and he will render that to us, then loss of life is terrifying if we’re not right with God.

Silent Slave Master

The existence of God in relationship to demise is a terrifying thing. Hebrews 2:14–15 says it’s a slave master if you are afraid of dying. And it states in verse 15 that all people has been held in bondage all their daily life prolonged by the fear of dying.

I believed about that. A whole lot of individuals would deny that. A large amount of individuals who really don’t believe that in God would say, “We’re not concerned. We are not living a daily life of bondage. I suggest, glimpse at us: Do we search like we’re in bondage? We’re the freest of all folks, doing what we want to do. What in the earth do you signify that everybody is held in slavery and bondage by the anxiety of loss of life? What are you talking about? Where’s this verse coming from?”

“Even individuals who really do not believe in God are subconsciously dominated by the fear of death, one way or the other.”

Here’s what I feel it is implying. I assume even persons who really don’t imagine in God, and who on the surface are not feeling terrified, are subconsciously dominated by the panic of death, one particular way or the other. It’s a silent slave learn. Just one of its principal kinds of slavery is by placing you in the dreamworld of denial. Now, you don’t experience it this way, but the way you can convey to if you’re in it or not is by considering what you are willing to think significantly about. Denial of the loss of life that terrifies manifests by itself in all sorts of techniques of escaping from acquiring to consider extended or a great deal about your mortality and about your dying.

It’s just one issue that Individuals will not permit on their own think very long about, and as a result we surround ourselves with all varieties of interruptions and narcotics to escape from what we know we’d be fearful of if we thought about it. And hence, it is ruling us from beneath.

Cruising Towards Demise

I thought of this analogy. It is like the cruise command on our station wagon. It does not perform, but I know what cruise control is for. The fear of death is like a cruise management in the soul that is established about at 55 miles an hour of contentment and simplicity.

Now, if anything commences to happen where your lifetime begins to gradual down to a speed of pensiveness and reflection and thoughtfulness, and big realities begin to occur into your consciousness so that you start off to question some big, significant thoughts, that cruise management is likely to bump back up to 55 in a massive hurry so that you do not have to get into wondering about and dealing with these big thoughts that you can have when your everyday living slows down to a restful speed. It’s late at evening, it’s silent, the stars are out, the youngsters are asleep — and you commence to question the massive questions. The anxiety of demise, not even consciously, claims, “Quick — convert it on. Switch it on. Get the volume up. Get shifting. Start executing a little something. You can’t offer with that.”

Then it works the other way. At times God, in his prevalent graces — and we have all knowledgeable this — moves into your coronary heart and begins to rev up your inquisitive motor, and you start out to inquire and believe, and it’s a type of new day. You acquire books, and you pursue, and you want to know how to fix mysteries. It’s not the same reflective atmosphere that I was chatting about a minute back. It is power, it is inquiry, it’s pursuit, mainly because you know there is a little something essential out there, and at that 65 or 75 miles for each hour you could in actuality find it. And so, the cruise control requires the foot off the accelerator and brings you back again down to the relieve and convenience of 55. The Television is just ideal. The leisure is just right. The family is just correct. The function is just proper. You do not have to have to talk to any of individuals queries or make any of that pursuit.

Our Inner Legislation

This is what I believe the writer in this article signifies when he states, “We are being held in bondage, all our everyday living extensive, by the fear of death” (see Hebrews 2:15). There’s a slavery. Everyone who does not come to phrases with truth — with God, with sin, with guilt, with punishment, with demise, and with hell — if you really do not appear to expression with individuals realities, you need to be in denial. You need to be residing a life governed subconsciously, or probably consciously, by the panic of loss of life.

“If you’re not appropriate with God, that legislation published on your heart is heading to make you a slave to the anxiety of demise.”

Some of you know what it’s like to are living consciously in awful anxieties all the time. So whether or not subconsciously or consciously, this is the situation. Romans 2:15 says that the regulation of God is composed on each individual human coronary heart, your conscience bearing witness with that law, both condemning or affirming.

So I, on the authority of the Bible — the very same Bible that Billy Graham holds up, and he appears to be to get a whole lot of approval — that same Bible states that everybody in this area, everyone that will go to the Dome tonight or has been there, has the regulation of God prepared across your coronary heart, and it is damning you or affirming you, in accordance to regardless of whether you are proper with God. And if you are not correct with God, that legislation created there is going to make you a slave to the anxiety of death.